Provincial test results for Northern Lights Public Schools (NLPS) have remained steady over the last few years.
“When we look at our rolling three-year averages, it’s been fairly consistent over the last five years,” explained associate superintendent of teaching and learning Jimmi Lou Irvine.
At their Nov. 13 meeting, the board of trustees were presented with the Provincial Achievement Tests (PAT) and Diploma Exams (PDE) results from the 2018/19 school year.
“We know that we have a lot of work to do with regards to our students pushing more towards meeting the provincial levels of excellence, and we’ve talked about that for the last couple of years,” Irvine noted.
Last school year, NLPS’ overall results for PATs saw 67.8 per cent of students reaching acceptable results, which was a slight drop from 2017 and 2018 when it was 70 per cent. For PDEs, the amount of students reaching acceptable levels were 79.2 per cent, a decrease from 83.3 per cent in 2017 and 81.3 per cent in 2018.
The Grade 6 PAT results saw NLPS students falling just short of the provincial average with 75.4 per cent in science and 72.1 per cent in social studies. English language arts was at 76.4 per cent acceptable, compared to the province’s 83.2 per cent. Math was also below the provincial acceptable level at 66.4 per cent.
PATs for Grade 9 for English language arts, science, and social studies just missed the mark of the provincial average, while the results for math at the acceptable provincial standard put the division roughly 10 per cent below the provincial average.
When it came to Grade 9 English language arts PATs, roughly 68 per cent of students reached acceptable levels and 5.6 per cent received excellent. NLPS students were just below both of the provincial averages, which came in around 75 per cent for acceptable and 14.7 per cent for excellent.
In math and science the results for acceptable were 49.3 per cent and 72.2 per cent respectively, while the provincial level for acceptable sat at 60 per cent for math and 75.2 per cent for science. Grade 9 social studies acceptable results came in at 62.2 per cent, which just missed the mark for the province’s average.
The Grade 9 Knowledge and Employability (K&E) PATs, which are courses for students who learn best through hands-on experiences and integrates skills through work placements, for English language arts had 50 per cent of students at acceptable levels and the provincial average was 57.4 per cent.
NLPS students fell slightly below the provincial acceptable averages for Grade 9 K&E math and science with 52.8 per cent in math and 53.3 per cent in science.
Around 63 per cent of students across the division reached acceptable levels in K&E social studies, beating the 55.9 per cent provincial average.
The Grade 12 PDE results in math were on par with the province, with 76.7 per cent of students reaching the acceptable level. In the other PDE subjects, including English language arts, math, and social studies, NLPS was below the provincial avergae for the acceptable standard.
A focus for NLPS moving forward is assisting students with math and concentrating on their mental wellbeing, which was feedback heard during information sessions with parents last year.
“I see here we’re at a starting point, and we look forward to renewing our focus on developing numeracy skills,” Irvine said. “Obviously, we anticipate that this will have positive impacts on our students. I do want to thank the board for the opportunity to really focus on those areas… If we also try to talk about this isolation without addressing the mental health of our students, we won’t be able to move forward with our achievement results. Allowing us to have a laser focus on those two areas, we expect that will provide us with opportunities to advance our achievement and student learning.”
Trustee Ron Young believes the full implementation of common assessments, which are tests students complete to see where they’re at in course work to determine what areas need to be improved on, in the four core subjects in Grade 7 and 8, could impact their results and bring NLPS closer to the excellent levels.
“What confounds me is how we consistently exceed the acceptable standards, and always fall short of the standard of excellence,” he exclaimed. “I just don’t know what we have to change to bring those standards of excellence numbers up, but I think common assessments might be one way of facilitating that. This reinforces the need to be going out there, and holding the principal’s feet to the fire and having them really do a deep dive into their analyzes to figure out what they can change.”
